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In the last couple of years, the gaming community has welcomed indie developers to make a name for themselves the gaming industry, none more so than PC Gamers. We are very excited for the indie-game Freak, developed by Crowned Daemon Studious. This up and coming creation promises to be released for PC, in addition to Mac and Linux. There still remains a lot to be reveled, but after this interview, Freak already feels like more than just another indie-zombie-shooter.

At the moment, the game has been shrouded in secrecy by Crowned Daemon Studios, leaving many unanswered questions. The development team was generous enough to answer a few of our question about Freak. During our discussion, I learned about the process in making games for different operating systems in the Unity Engine and the differences thereof. After speaking with them, it’s clear that my anticipation for Freak was well-founded!

TechRaptor: “In a few words, can you describe Freak?”CDS Team: “Freak is 2D top down zombie stealth shooter with a twist: in this game, you play as a zombie who has managed to retain his humanity. The game features moral choice, crafting, and other elements to force the player to experience life in the wilderness while dealing with the infection. Freak is very story driven, focusing on the narratives of characters that you might not see in a typical zombie game.”

Our main character, Tinker, first known person to be turned into a zombie and retain their humanity.

TechRaptor: “Freak revolves around a young protagonist named Tinker. What’s his story?”CDS Team: “Tinker is a 14 year old who gets bitten while traveling with a group through the wilderness. As the only survivor of the attack, and the first known person to be turned into a zombie and retain their humanity, Tinker will have to brave the dangerous path through Vancouver to find the one outpost that has the medical technology needed to discover the cause of his immunity. An introverted, quiet person by nature, Tinker will have to deal with a variety of difficult personal trials along the way.”

TechRaptor: “Given the genre, we expect Freak to have a rather dark undertone, but how dreary can we expect the game to be?”CDS Team: “It’s a zombie game, so some dreariness is to be expected but we didn’t want the game to be all misery. There are parts of the game where you play as characters with a more positive outlook. For example, one part of the game has you playing from the perspective of a cartoon superhero who fights zombies written by an eight year old. We wanted to keep a lot of variety with the characters and situations you encounter.”

TechRaptor: “Are their any games out their you would consider Freak’s gameplay to be similar to?”CDS Team: “With the top down perspective, Hotline Miami is a pretty obvious comparison. I’d say it has the feel of Hotline Miami with the stealth and anxiety of Day Z.”

TechRaptor: “What compelled CDS to develop Freak for Mac OS X in addition to PC?”CDS Team: “Within Unity, it’s easy for us to develop for Mac iOS, so we saw no reason not to.”

TechRaptor: “How similar is the process between eloping for Mac, Linux, and PC?”CDS Team: “In Unity it’s not really that different. The only difference is keybinding… making sure

Hannah is a playable character featured demo and will also be in the full game!

controls work comfortably between platforms, or in this case, IOS. We want to be able to provide a uniform experience for everyone playing the game so it’s important that the experience between a PC, Mac, or other platform is the same.”

TechRaptor: “We were informed that this Game will be running on multiple PC platforms, but will we be expecting other platforms announced as well?”CDS Team: “While we’re certain we’re going to release for PC, we are looking into releasing for other platforms as well. We’re not 100% on which platforms those will be yet… a lot of those decisions will happen after we run our Kickstarter. In short, we’re definitely moving in the direction of other platforms but for now, PC and Mac are the only two we’re comfortable confirming.”

TechRaptor: “Lastly, is there an anticipated release date for Freak that we can look forward to?CDS Team: “We don’t have a solid release date yet but it will be roughly a year after we release our official demo which will roll out in conjunction with our kickstarter. We’re hoping to launch our Kickstarter in mid to late July. In the meantime, we’re encouraging everyone to follow our production team on Facebook or Twitter. We always keep everyone up to date on our progress there and run a bunch of interactive discussions and contests to keep everyone interested in the meantime.”

In this interview, there was a lot to say about Freak and the team was generous enough to release information not yet given to the public. However, there’s still so many unasked questions about the game, which only increases our excitement its demo release! We look forward to Crowned Daemon Studious’ upcoming creation and TechRaptor will have more news once the kickstarted begins and the demo is released.

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Resident gaming writer for TechRaptor here! love writing about technology and software and enjoy gaming on consoles and PC. I'm working towards my Communications Degree to become an even better writer and make Game Journalism a career.